Can you tell us about your recently published book, "Return of a King"?

William Dalrymple: "The Return of a King" is about the
first British assault on Afghanistan. In 1839, 18,000 East India Company
and British troops marched through the Bolan and Khojak passes and
conquered Afghanistan and [placed] on the throne Shah Shuja-ul Mulk, the
grandson of Ahmad Shah Durrani -- the first ruler of the first Afghan
Empire -- and threw out Dost Mohammad Khan, who the British were worried
was flirting with tsarist Russia.

What essentially is the story of the First Anglo-Afghan
War -- how did it start, what were its main events, and who won in the
end?

Dalrymple: The story in a nutshell is that 18,000
troops march into Afghanistan. They install the puppet king, Shah Shuja,
on the throne. An insurgency breaks out a year and a half later, and
the British are catastrophically defeated. They are completely
unprepared for the insurgency which breaks out. They are quickly
surrounded. Their two leaders are killed. They surrender and they are
promised safe passage back to India. In that retreat, 18,000 men, women,
and children march out of the Kabul cantonment. Only one single
survivor makes it through to the Jalalabad cantonment, Dr. [William] Brydon.

How do the Afghans remember the First Anglo-Afghan War?

Dalrymple: Well, for the Afghans, this is a great
national liberation struggle. What the Battle of Britain or Waterloo or
Trafalgar is to the British or what the Easter Rising is to the Irish or
what Gandhi and the freedom struggle is to the Indians, this is to the
Afghans. This is their great supreme triumph because they take on the
British at the very peak of the British [Empire]. And for the Afghans it
is a miraculous [event] and to this day the diplomatic area in Kabul is
called Wazir Akbar Khan after the main Barakzai leader [of the uprising
against the British].

What is your take on modern perceptions of Afghanistan after researching a war that took place 160 years ago?

Dalrymple: Just like a modern ignorant Fox News
commentator in Afghanistan thinks that anyone who resists the Americans
is a Taliban, thinks that he is a bigot or a fanatic, so the British at
this period are apt to just see masses of bearded Afghans fighting them
and assume that they are all religious fanatics.

But the Afghan sources allow you to go beyond that and allow you to
understand individual motives, individual reasons, for taking up arms.
And like a good reporter today who can give complexity to anything that
happens, a good journalist working in Afghanistan today will be able to
explain the motivations of every side.

How relevant are the lessons of the First Anglo-Afghan War to the situation today?

Dalrymple: Well the most obvious lesson is that you
will occupy and invade Afghanistan at your peril. It famously is a place
which defends its independence very resolutely. It is also a place
which is very expensive to occupy, and I think this is an underrated
factor.​​
Everyone knows that the Afghans are fierce fighters. I think few people
have taken in that each successive occupation of Afghanistan is undone
ultimately by the cost. It's not that the Afghans can't be defeated --
they can be if you throw enough military might and money at it. But to
do so you have to throw in thousands of troops. You have to garrison
every valley. You have to supply the troops in every remote valley that
you have a garrison there.

It's an expensive business. It broke the back of the East India Company.
It breaks the back of the Soviets in 1970s and 1980s; their economy was
wrecked by their invasion of Afghanistan. And finally, it has broken
the back of the American balance of payments. Americans have lost a
fortune in Afghanistan for very little gain.

How relevant are the lessons of the First Anglo-Afghan
War for Afghanistan's future, as another great power prepares to leave
the country?

Dalrymple: One thing to state clearly is that
Afghanistan is a difficult place to rule -- for anyone to rule. There
are many different [ethnic] groups. The geography does not lend itself
to centralized government based on one place. And there have been very
few periods in history when Afghanistan has been successfully
centralized and ruled from a strong center. In general, Afghanistan has
been fractured, decentralized, and, as the Pashtun saying goes, "Every
Afghan is a khan" -- is a king.

I think the most likely outcome of the next few years is again a period
of decentralization -- when Kabul will [cease] to be as central to the
affairs of Afghans on the periphery as it is today. And I fear we are in
for another period of bloodshed and decentralization. And possibly
warlordism again. I don't think many people are very optimistic about
the future.